EX-LEADER BANNED FROM LEAVING PERU
A Peruvian judge on Saturday barred recently resigned President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from leaving the South American nation for 18 months while he’s investigated for money laundering.
The ruling came a day after congress accepted Kuczynski’s resignation and swore in Vice President Martin Vizcarra as his successor.
Kuczynski, 79, is being probed for some $782,000 in payments his consulting firm received a decade ago from Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction giant at the heart of Latin America’s biggest-ever bribery scandal.
Polish holiday for those who aided Jews. POLAND» Polish officials held prayers and ceremonies honoring Poles who gave shelter and aid to Jews during the Holocaust as the country for the first time marked a new national holiday in their memory.
The main celebrations were held Saturday in the southern village of Markowa. That is where German forces in 1944 executed a Polish man and his pregnant wife, Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, their six children and the eight Jews they were hiding.
Poland’s president and prime minister sent letters that were read out that praised the courage of the Markowa family and the thousands of other Poles who helped Jews during Germany’s wartime occupation.
Journalist expelled from Egypt. CAIRO» Egyptian authorities arrested a British journalist and expelled her from the country after threatening her with a military trial, The Times said on Saturday. The move comes as part of a heavy crackdown on media ahead of this month’s presidential elections.
Bel Trew, who has been in Egypt for seven years, had been detained and faced “sufficiently outlandish” threats to suggest a misunderstanding over reporting she carried out in a central Cairo district, The Times (of London) said. She was expelled in late February.
20 people acquitted in lynching.
LAHORE,
» A Pakistani court has acquitted twenty people suspected of involvement in the lynching and burning alive of a Christian couple accused of blasphemy in 2014.
Shahzad Masih, 26, and Shama Shahzad, 24, brick factory workers and parents of three, were burned alive in an industrial kiln by a mob incited by accusations that the couple desecrated the Quran in the town of Kot Radha Kishan.
Police arrested scores of villagers and a court in Nov 2016 sentenced five men to death while ten others were given varying jail terms.
Turkish protesters called “terrorists”.
Turkey’s president on Saturday criticized anti-war students at a top university, calling them “terrorists” and promising to oust them from their studies.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said “communist, traitor youth” tried to mess up a student stand opened by “religious, nationalist, local youth” at the public Bogazici University. Speaking in northern Samsun province, Erdogan announced an investigation and said “we won’t give these terrorist youth the right to study at these universities.”